Shane Victorino celebrates his Game 6 ALCS grand slam with David Ortiz, whose Game 2 slam got them back into the series. / Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY Sports

by Paul White, USA TODAY Sports

by Paul White, USA TODAY Sports

BOSTON - Back when there were curses in these parts, Game 6 of the American League Championship Series would have become legendary for all the wrong reasons.

Not anymore with this century's Boston Red Sox. The 2013 version just keeps on coming - relentless, they call themselves - and Shane Victorino's seventh-inning grand slam has them in their third World Series since 2004.

The fly ball off Detroit reliever Jose Veras into the seats above the Green Monster near the left field corner took the Red Sox from a one-run deficit to a 5-2 victory and into a rematch of the 2004 World Series sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was that sweep that ended Boston's 86-year wait to win baseball's ultimate championship.

It only seems like the good times have continued unabated since.

"It's a special moment that I'll never forget," Victorino told USA TODAY Sports as he made his way to the victory podium. "We play 27 outs. We play 'til the end."

Victorino couldn't have picked a more fitting spot to deposit his homer, in a spot about equidistant from where two near-misses by the Red Sox earlier in the game went.

Before whatever has changed around New England, those balls hit by Dustin Pedroia and Jonny Gomes - one hooking foul, the other striking the very top of the Monster - would have gone down as excruciating chapters in what always happened around the Red Sox.

Victorino doesn't have the history in Boston, but he was dealing with own short-term version of disappointment.

"I was down and out," he said of coming to the plate 2-for-23 in the series, including a failed bunt just before Pedroia's near-miss in the third. "I heard people talking about dropping me in the lineup. Lots of thoughts were going through my head, like how I was going to explain not getting that bunt down.

"I got up, (thought) do what you do best and have fun doing what you're doing."

So much fun, in fact, that he was pounding his chest as he rounded third.

"No disrespect, I would never be one of those guys," said Victorino, who usually watches from the background during the wilder moments of the team's clubhouse situations. "But I was definitely excited running the bases. I hope they understand it was a special moment for me, for the city."

Pedroia nearly became the guy, when he came to the plate in the third inning of a scoreless game with one out and two runners on.

His foul fly down the left field line came so close to the foul pole that the umpires double checked via replay. Pedroia started toward first base then watched, without the histrionics of Carlton Fisk in his legendary game-winner in the 1975 World Series.

Remember, magic moments used to be so hard to come by in Boston that it's almost forgotten that Fisk's homer came in a series the Red Sox lost.

Interestingly, it came on the first pitch after Scherzer made a headlong diving catch on Victorino's popped-up bunt in front of the plate.

Maybe he hadn't regrouped completely from his chest-first bounce on the Fenway turf, but Scherzer had plenty of time to take a deep breath as the umpires reviewed and correctly upheld the foul-ball call and he avoided the third-inning meltdown by the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw in Friday's NLCS clinches for St. Louis.

Pedroia then bounced to third baseman Miguel Cabrera, who stepped on third base to start a double play.

"When those opportunities come and go, you're wondering if you're going to get them back," Red Sox manager John Farrell said. "But it's been a characteristic of this team that we're able to battle to the end."

Gomes saw to it that another chance emerged. He came equally close to tying the game in the seventh, when his leadoff double came within a few inches of dropping into the seats atop the Green Monster.

But it was the hit that began what these modern-day Red Sox do so well. And this team even is a base ball generation away from that 2004 squad, from which only David Ortiz remains.

After striking out Stephen Drew, Scherzer - who had allowed a run and three hits entering the inning after his one-run, two-hit effort in seven innings of Game 2 - walked Xander Bogaerts.

At 110 pitches - the last a full-count borderline ball to Bogaerts - manager Jim Leyland finally felt compelled to make a change.

Drew Smyly entered and got Jacoby Ellsbury to hit a bouncer up the middle, probably too difficult a play for the Tigers to turn an inning-ending double play. But shortstop Jose Iglesias - a Red Sox until a July 30 trade to the Tigers - bobbled it and didn't even get a forceout at second base.

Veras entered the game and Victorino erased all that "not-quite" angst.

If there's any what-ifs to be taken from Game 6, it goes back to the Tigers' offensive immobility, which cost them a chance to take command of the game in the sixth inning, when they reversed a one-run lead the Red Sox had taken the previous half-inning.

The Tigers' lack of speed pretty much makes them a station-to-station team but they derailed a potential survival inning between the stations.

The trouble started with Detroit's biggest moment of the night, Victor Martinez's bases-loaded single to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead. The hit was high off the wall in left-center field, but the slow Martinez could risk no more than a big turn at first base.

Still, that gave Detroit runners at first and third with no outs. Brandon Workman entered the game and got Jhonny Peralta to bounce a ball to second baseman Pedroia. Because Martinez was on first base in the first place, Pedroia was able to tag him between first and second then throw home.

Prince Fielder, who had been on third, was barely halfway down the baseline and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia was able to out-run back to third â?? in part because Fielder tried to dive to the bag, but only got as far as the dirt several feet short of the base.

That inning also produced what could have been Farrell's second-guess moment of the series.

Farrell was intent on making sure this also wasn't a carbon copy of his starter's Game 2 performance, when Clay Buchholz had been just as stingy as he was Saturday.

But Buchholz allowed a walk to Torii Hunter and a single to Miguel Cabrera to start the sixth and Farrell wasn't going to take the chance it could turn out like the sixth inning of Game 2, when five of the seven batters Buchholz faced that inning reached base, including two homers and two doubles.

Farrell summoned lefty Franklin Morales from the bullpen.

Before Saturday, the only time this postseason a Boston reliever other than Craig Breslow, Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara had pitched with the Red Sox leading as an inning by Ryan Dempster in Game 1 of the Division Series with Boston ahead 12-2.

He instead used Franklin Morales who allowed a walk and Martinez's single.

But Scherzer couldn't quite hold it. The key: Bogaerts worked his third full count of the night and reached base for the third time, drawing a walk on a borderline ball four call.

That finished Scherzer. Then Victorino, with one swing, dismissed any notion that this franchise is anything but charmed these days.